Liverpool lost their most potent goalscorer in the summer of 1987 and somehow became more potent.

Ian Rush left for Juventus after scoring 207 goals for the club. John Aldridge had already arrived that January to replace some of those goals, but Kenny Dalglish did not stop there. He rebuilt the attack.

John Barnes and Peter Beardsley joined Aldridge to form the famous trio. Barnes arrived from Watford for £900,000, a fee that would soon look like a bargain.

Some questioned whether a player with so much individual skill would fit into Liverpool’s team. Dalglish saw it differently. He regarded Barnes as one of the best crossers of a ball in British football. His ability to beat a man was not something Liverpool needed to control. It was something they could use.

Nine minutes into his debut, Barnes showed why.

Against Arsenal at Highbury, Beardsley played him down the left. Barnes crossed with his left foot and Aldridge headed Liverpool in front. All three involved, and Liverpool were on their way to a 2–1 win.

Barnes also scored on his Anfield debut, a 2–0 win against Oxford United on 12 September. He set up Aldridge for the opener before scoring a free-kick himself.

Goals and assists were already coming together.

The afternoon against QPR

On 17 October 1987, league leaders QPR came to Anfield. Liverpool beat them 4–0, with Barnes involved in all four goals.

His first was great. A one-two with Aldridge, then a right-footed finish into the corner.

The second was even better.

Barnes won the ball near halfway and drove towards the penalty area. How he goes one way and then the other is something only the very best players can do. Then a cool finish past David Seaman, again with his right foot.

That is what stands out when you watch Barnes from this period. He could hurt a defender either way.

Earlier in the same game he had gone down the outside and crossed with his left. Then he was cutting inside and scoring with his right.

If you have pace, power, great skill and the ability to go either way, no full-back in the history of the game is having an easy afternoon.

And that is what wingers should do. Go past people.

But Barnes was more than that. He had the full package: pace, power, balance, goals and intelligence.

The one-two with Aldridge for his first goal against QPR is a good example. He did not just beat players because he was quicker or stronger. He had the awareness to see what was developing around him.

Rush watched the game from the directors’ box. Afterwards, he said Liverpool were a better team than the one he had left behind.

That says plenty.

More than individual brilliance

The QPR game showed what Liverpool were getting.

Barnes could beat defenders and finish himself. He could go outside and cross. He could come inside and score. And he could combine with the players around him.

His individual ability was making Liverpool’s attack better, not getting in its way.

That continued into the spring.

He supplied Ray Houghton’s winner against Everton in the FA Cup and set up Aldridge in the semi-final against Nottingham Forest.

Four days after that semi-final, Forest came to Anfield and lost 5–0. Barnes created two of the goals without scoring himself.

It was the performance Sir Tom Finney described as the finest exhibition he had seen.

By the end of the season, Barnes had scored 17 goals in 48 appearances and was credited with 18 assists in all competitions.

He won both the PFA Players’ Player of the Year and the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year awards.

Liverpool went unbeaten in their first 29 league matches and won their 17th league title. Defeat to Wimbledon in the FA Cup final denied them the double, but it did not undo what this new attack had become.

The intelligence in Barnes’s game would become even clearer later in his career. Injuries eventually took away some of his pace, yet he was able to reinvent himself as a central midfielder. Not many wingers can do that.

Liverpool had lost Rush, one of the greatest goalscorers in the club’s history.

Dalglish responded by building something even more dangerous.

And John Barnes was at the centre of it.